A Palestinian girl mourns over the bodies of victims of an Israeli strike the previous night south of Gaza City, at Al-Ahli Arab hospital, also known as the Baptist hospital, in Gaza City. AFP
Agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP that "19 people were killed and more than 40 others wounded in three massacres caused by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip between midnight and this morning", as well as by tank fire in Rafah in the territory's south.
One of the strikes hit a house in the Zeitun neighbourhood of Gaza City in the north of the territory, killing seven people, three of them children, and wounding 10.
"What did these people do?" said Abdullah Shaldan, a member of the family whose house was destroyed. "They were sleeping in their homes -- they are civilians who have nothing to do with Hamas or the resistance."
AFPTV footage showed people searching the rubble using torches and mobile phones in the darkness, while a young boy desperately cried "papa".
Another strike in the main southern city of Khan Younis killed six people, including three children, and wounded 26 displaced people who were living in tents near the house that was struck, said Bassal.
"I immediately rushed there and saw the destruction and people carrying body parts from under the rubble," Umm Muhammad Abu Sabla, the sister of one of the victims, told AFP.
"Our entire life is misery. Let them kill us all so we can be relieved from this suffering," the 62-year-old said.
In Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, four people were killed in another strike on a house, and in Rafah, along the territory's southern border, two young men were killed by tank fire, Bassal said.
In Al-Bureij, three people -- a couple and their child -- were killed in Israeli artillery shelling, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported, citing medical sources.
While in Beit Lahia, two other people were killed in shelling of Al-Manshiya neighborhood, medical sources added.
Israel has killed at least 44,056 people during more than 13 months of war on Gaza, most of them women and children, according to figures from the territory's health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
Short link: